Some of the country’s most dangerous jihadis have been moved to a ‘prison within a prison’ in the North East in a bid to tackle radicalisation behind bars.

As previously reported by ChronicleLive, HMP Frankland was earmarked by the Government to house extremists to stop them spreading their poison to other prisoners.

The move has now happened and radicals are being housed in a separate centre within the high-security prison, which is already home to some of the most notorious criminals in the UK. . . But the jihadis are deemed so dangerous that prison bosses have been forced to lock them away from everyone else.

Lee Rigby’s killer, Michael Adebolajo, is already at Frankland and last month it emerged he was “brainwashing” fellow inmates in prison. Adebolajo, who killed Fusilier Rigby outside the Royal Artillery Barracks in Woolwich, South East London, in May 2013, was described as spending “most of his waking hours preaching his distorted form of Islam to anyone who will listen”.

Adebolajo and hate preacher Anjem Choudary could be among those locked away inside the separation centre. The move will also see two other separation centres created within high-security jails, with the three centres combined holding up to 28 of the most radicalised offenders.

The new centre at HMP Frankland was one of the main recommendations of a review which found evidence of "charismatic" prisoners acting as "self-styled emirs" to radicalise other inmates. It also suggested that "cultural sensitivity" among staff towards Muslim prisoners could "inhibit the effective confrontation of extremist views".

The Ministry of Justice declined to comment on which prisoners were being moved for security reasons.

Figures indicate that authorities are managing more than 1,000 inmates who have been identified as extremist or vulnerable to extremism at any one time.